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2
Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.
6) Data is recorded facts and figures; information is knowledge derived from data.
Answer: TRUE
AACSB: Information Technology
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To understand the nature and characteristics of databases
Classification: Concept

3
7) Databases record data in such a way that they can produce information.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
8) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an example of a data mining application.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Moderate
LO: To survey some important and interesting database applications
9) Databases are a key component of e-commerce order entry, billing, shipping, and customer
support.
Answer: TRUE
10) The largest databases in e-commerce are the order entry databases.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Difficult
11) E-commerce companies use Web activity databases to determine which items on a Web page
are popular and successful.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To understand the importance of databases in Internet Web applications and smartphone
apps
12) A surrogate key is a key typically used in place of a foreign key.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Easy
13) A database system is typically defined as its four components: users, database applications,
the DBMS and the databases.

4
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
14) Databases based on the CODASYL standard are based on the network data model.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To understand the history and development of database processing
15) Applications are computer programs used directly by users.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To gain a general understanding of tables and relationships
16) Applications usually write data directly to the database.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Easy
17) Sequenced Query Language (SQL) is an internationally recognized standard language that is
understood by all commercial database management system products.
Answer: FALSE
18) In database systems, indexes are held in the database.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To define the term database and describe what is contained within the database

5
19) A database management system (DBMS) creates, processes and administers databases.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To define the term database management system (DBMS) and describe the functions of a
DBMS
20) The database management system (DBMS) is responsible for inserting, modifying, reading,
and deleting data.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
DBMS
21) Knowledge workers are programmers who write applications that process the database.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To define and understand database design in database redesign
22) The database management system (DBMS) is responsible for enforcing referential integrity
constraints.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
DBMS
23) Referential integrity constraints are rules about what data values are allowed in certain
columns.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy

6
24) A database is a self-describing collection of non-integrated tables.
Answer: FALSE
25) Integrated tables store both data and the relationships among the data.
Answer: TRUE
26) Microsoft Access is just a DBMS.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To describe the components of a Microsoft Access database system and explain the
functions they perform
27) Microsoft Access is a low-end product intended for individuals and small workgroups.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
28) The current DBMS engine in Microsoft Access is called ADE.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
29) In Microsoft Access, you can use ODBC to connect to SQL Server in place of the ADE
database engine.
Answer: TRUE
Classification: Application

7
30) In an enterprise-class database system, a database application interacts with the DBMS.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To describe the components of an enterprise-class database system and explain the
31) In an enterprise-class database system, a database application accesses the database data.
Answer: FALSE
32) In an enterprise-class database system, business users interact directly with the DBMS,
which directly accesses the database data.
Answer: FALSE
33) All database applications send and receive database data by sending SQL statements to the
DBMS.
Answer: TRUE
DBMS
34) According to the text, IBM’s DB2 is the DBMS with the most power and features.
Answer: FALSE
35) According to the text, Oracle Corporation’s Oracle Database is considered the most difficult
DBMS to use.
Answer: TRUE

8
36) According to the text, Microsoft’s SQL Server is the easiest DBMS to use.
Answer: FALSE
37) According to the text, Microsoft Access has the least power and features of any major
DBMS.
Answer: TRUE
38) A database is called self-describing because it reduces data duplication.
Answer: FALSE
LO: To define the term metadata and provide examples of metadata
39) The description of a database's structure that is stored within the database itself is called the
metadata.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
40) Indexes are data structures that speed database searches.
Answer: TRUE
41) Database design is important, and fortunately it is simple to do.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To define and understand database design from existing data

9
42) A database design may be part of a new systems development project.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
LO: To define and understand database design as new systems development
43) A database design is rarely a redesign of an existing database.
Answer: FALSE
Difficulty: Easy
44) Each row in a database table is also known as a record.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
45) Data Language/I (DL/I) structured data relationships as a tree structure.
Answer: TRUE
46) The CODASYL DBTG model structured data relationships as a tree structure.
Answer: FALSE
47) The relational model was first proposed in 1970 by E. F. Codd at IBM.
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy

10
48) The 1977 edition of this text contained a chapter on the relational model, and that chapter
was reviewed by E. F. Codd.
Answer: TRUE
49) dBase was the first PC-based DBMS to implement true relational algebra on a PC.
Answer: FALSE
50) Paradox is the only major survivor of the "bloodbath of PC DBMS products."
Answer: FALSE
51) Business organizations have resisted adopting object-oriented database systems because the
cost of purchasing OODBMS packages is prohibitively high.
Answer: FALSE
52) Bill Gates has said that "XML is the lingua-franca of the Internet Age."
Answer: TRUE
Difficulty: Easy
53) XML Web services allow database processing to be shared across the Internet.
Answer: TRUE
apps

11
54) The NoSQL movement could also be called a NoRelational movement.
Answer: TRUE
55) Twitter and Facebook use NoSQL databases.
Answer: TRUE
LO: To understand the history and development of database processing Classification: Concept
56) The purpose of a database is to ________.
A) help people keep track of things
B) store data in tables
C) create tables of rows and columns
D) maintain data on different things in different tables
Answer: A
57) A database stores ________.
A) data
B) relationships
C) applications
D) Both A and B are correct
Answer: D
58) Which of the following statements is true about Web 2.0?
A) It requires the Android Operating System.
B) It allows users to add content to Web sites.
C) Twitter and Facebook are examples of Web 2.0 sites.
D) Both B and C are correct
Answer: D
Difficulty: Easy
apps

12
59) A sales contact manager used by a salesperson is an example of a(n) ________.
A) single-user database application
B) multiuser database application
C) e-commerce database application
D) data mining application
Answer: A
60) A Customer Resource Management (CRM) system is an example of a(n) ________.
D) digital dashboard
Answer: B
61) An online drugstore such as Drugstore.com is an example of a(n) ________.
D) enterprise resource planning system
Answer: C
Difficulty: Easy
62) The industry standard supported by all major DBMSs that allows tables to be joined together
is called ________.
A) Sequential Query Language (SQL)
B) Structured Question Language (SQL)
C) Structured Query Language (SQL)
D) Standard Question Language (SQL)
Answer: C
Difficulty: Easy
63) A program whose job is to create, process and administer databases is called a ________.
A) database modeling system

13
B) database management system
C) data business model system
D) relational model manager
Answer: B
Difficulty: Easy
DBMS
64) Microsoft Access includes ________.
A) a DBMS
B) an application generator
C) a Web server
Answer: D
65) Microsoft Access may use which of the following DBMS engines?
A) ADE
B) SQL Server
C) Oracle
Answer: D
66) Which of the following is not an XML Web service standard?
A) SOAP
B) WSDL
C) Ethernet
D) UDDI
Answer: C
apps
67) Which of the following statements is not true for an enterprise-class database system?

14
A) The database application(s) interact(s) with the DBMS.
B) The database application(s) directly access(es) the database data.
C) The DBMS accesses the database data.
D) The application generates SQL statements.
Answer: B
68) Which of the following database systems is not enterprise-class?
A) Microsoft SQL Server
B) Microsoft Access
C) Oracle Database
D) IBM DB2
Answer: B
69) In an enterprise-class database system, reports are created by ________.
A) the user
B) the database application
C) the database management system (DBMS)
D) the database
Answer: B
70) Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) is a technology used to ________.
A) connect servers to a client in a Client-Server architecture
B) connect to web pages over the Internet
C) connect applications to a DBMS
D) connect hardware devices to a computer system
Answer: B
AACSB:
Classification:

15
71) In database systems, the DBMS enforces rules about which data can be written in certain
columns. These rules are known as ________.
A) data insertion control
B) data modification control
C) concurrency control
D) referential integrity constraints
Answer: D
DBMS
72) In database systems, the DBMS enforces rules about which user can perform which action
when. The rules are known as ________.
A) referential integrity constraints
B) data modification control
C) data reading control
D) concurrency control
Answer: D
DBMS
73) A database is considered self-describing because ________.
A) all the users' data is in one place
B) it reduces data duplication
C) it contains a description of its own structure
D) it contains a listing of all the programs that use it
Answer: C
Difficulty: Easy
74) A database consists of integrated tables, which store ________.
A) reports
B) data and relationships among the data
C) forms
D) Both A and C are correct
Answer: B
Difficulty: Easy

16
75) Which of the following statements is not true for primary keys in a relational database
system?
A) They can be used to create relationships between tables.
B) They must contain numeric data.
C) They uniquely identify a row in a table.
D) They can be part of relational integrity constraints.
Answer: B
76) This database component is used to maintain database accuracy and enforce data constraints.
A) tables
B) metadata
C) triggers
D) stored procedures
Answer: C
77) This database component can be used as part of applications and for administration tasks.
A) tables
B) metadata
C) triggers
D) stored procedures
Answer: D
78) A database designed using spreadsheets from the Sales department is a database being
designed ________.
A) from existing data
B) as a new systems development project
C) as a redesign of an existing database
D) as a NoSQL database
Answer: A

17
79) A(n) _______________ is used by a senior manager to extract, summarize, and consolidate
operational databases.
A) data mining application
B) digital dashboard
C) e-commerce site application
D) customer relationship management application
Answer: B
80) A database designed to combine two databases used by the Sales department is a database
being designed ________.
A) from existing data
B) as a new systems development project
C) as a redesign of an existing database
Answer: C
81) Database professionals use ________ as specific data sources for studies and analyses.
A) data marts
B) normalization
C) data models
D) entity-relationship data modeling
Answer: A
82) Database professionals use a set of principles called ________ to guide and assess database
design.
A) database extraction
B) normalization
C) data models
Answer: B

18
83) A very popular development technique used by database professionals for database design is
known as ________.
A) database extraction
B) normalization
C) data models
Answer: D
84) A very popular development technique used by database professionals to adopt a database
design to a new or changing requirement is known as ________.
A) normalization
B) data models
C) entity-relationship data modeling
D) database migration
Answer: D
85) The predecessors of database processing were ________.
A) file managers
B) hierarchical models
C) network models
D) relational data models
Answer: A
86) Which statement is not true about the relational model?
A) It was first proposed in 1970.
B) It was developed by E. F. Codd.
C) It was developed at Oracle.
D) It resulted in the DBMS product DB2.
Answer: C

19
87) Modern microcomputer personal DBMS products ________.
A) are supplied by several well-established manufacturers
B) were essentially made obsolete by Microsoft Access
C) have poor response time
D) are not true DBMS products
Answer: B
88) Business organizations have resisted adopting object-oriented database management systems
because ________.
A) the cost of purchasing OODBMS packages is prohibitively high
B) the cost of converting data from relational databases to OODBMSs is too high
C) most large organizations have older applications that are not based on object oriented
programming
D) Both B and C are correct
Answer: D
89) For database development, the most important Web-related technology to emerge in recent
years is ________.
A) FTP
B) HTTP
C) XML
D) OODBMS
Answer: C
apps
90) For database development, a challenge to the relational model and the use of SQL is known
as ________.
A) the Web services movement
B) the NoSQL movement
C) the SOAP movement
D) the XML movement
Answer: B

20
91) What is the purpose of a database, and how does the database accomplish this purpose?
Answer: The purpose of a database is to help people keep track of things. It accomplishes this
by storing data in tables. Similar to a spreadsheet, each table has rows and columns. A database
usually has multiple tables to keep track of different but related things. For example, we might
have a CUSTOMER table to keep track of customers and a PRODUCT table to keep track of the
things we sell. Each row in each table holds data about a particular instance (i.e., one customer or
one product). The database also stores the links between the tables, so that we can track which
customers bought which products (note: this will require an additional table if one customer can
buy more than one product and one product can be sold to more than one customer).
92) What are the four components of a database system?
Answer: The four components in a database system are: the user, the database application, the
database management system (DBMS) and the database. The user interacts with the database
application, which interacts with the DBMS, which controls the database. The functions of the
database application include creating and processing forms, creating and transmitting queries and
creating and processing reports. The DBMS creates databases, tables and supporting structures,
manages database data, enforces rules and provides security. The database stores user data,
database metadata, indexes, triggers, stored procedures and application metadata.
93) Briefly describe the function of an application program in a database system.
Answer: The application program is responsible for creating and processing forms. The
application displays the form to the user, allows the user to complete the data entry, evaluates the
form to determine which data management tasks need to be performed, and transmits the
appropriate requests to the DBMS. The application creates and transmits queries. The queries are
requests for data that are created in a language like SQL, and transmitted to the DBMS to have
the requested data returned to the application program. The application also creates and
processes reports. The query to retrieve the necessary data for the report is sent to the DBMS.
When the DBMS returns the needed data, the application manipulates it as necessary to create
the requested report. The application program also applies application logic to control the
manipulation of data in accordance with the business rules. Finally, the application program is
responsible for providing control. Control must be exercised to allow the users to make choices
for functions and tasks as appropriate for their jobs as well as to manage the activities of the
DBMS.

21
94) What components are included in a database?
Answer: The database contains user data, metadata, indexes and other overhead data, and
application metadata. User data is the data from the user's environment that they want to track.
Metadata is data about the structure of the database. Indexes and other overhead data are
structures that the database uses to improve performance. Finally, the application metadata is
data about forms, reports, and other application components that some databases, particularly
those created with desktop DBMS products, store with the database.
95) Why do we say a database is self-describing and why is this an advantage?
Answer: A database is considered self-describing because it contains a description of its own
structure within the database itself. This description is called the metadata, and it is stored in
specialized tables in relational databases. The advantage is that the database is self-documenting,
and that a knowledgeable user or a database designer can easily access the metadata. All DBMS
vendors provide tools to access the metadata within their products.
96) What is metadata and how does it relate to the definition of a database?
Answer: Metadata is data about the structure of the database itself. This includes data about the
names of all tables and columns in the database, the data type of each column in each table, and
the properties of the tables and the columns, etc. Metadata accounts for the self-describing aspect
of the definition of a database as a "self-describing collection of integrated tables."

22
97) Briefly describe the function of the DBMS in a database system.
Answer: The DBMS creates the database and the tables and structures within it. The DBMS also
reads and updates the database data. It receives requests from application programs to perform
data maintenance tasks. These requests are translated into actions that are performed on the
database. In addition to maintaining the user data within the database, the DBMS also maintains
the database structures. The DBMS also enforces any rules that have been defined to govern the
values of the data, such as data type requirements and referential integrity constraints. The
DBMS controls concurrency issues, which deal with the unwanted interruption of one user's
work by another user's work. As the only point of entry into the database, the DBMS also
provides security for the database to restrict users' access to only the data that they have authority
to read or modify. Finally, the DBMS is responsible for the creation of backup copies of the
database data and for restoring the database in case a recovery is required.
DBMS
98) What are referential integrity constraints? Give an example.
Answer: A referential integrity constraint is a rule that restricts certain actions on the database
data. A referential integrity constraint is used to ensure that the values in a field in one table have
matching tables in a corresponding field in another table. These constraints are enforced by the
DBMS, which will not allow changes to the values of the database that would result in violations
of this rule. For example, a database has an EMPLOYEE table and a VEHICLE table that are
used to store data on employees and the vehicles that they are assigned to drive. The
EMPLOYEE table has a column called EmployeeID that is used to distinguish one employee
record from another. The VEHICLE table also has an EmployeeID column that is used to
associate a vehicle with the appropriate employee. A referential integrity constraint could be
used to prevent a vehicle from being assigned to an employee with an EmployeeID that does not
appear in the EMPLOYEE table by requiring that all values in EmployeeID in the VEHICLE
table have a matching value in EmployeeID in the EMPLOYEE table.
DBMS
99) What are the three types of database design situations?
Answer: Database designs can be based on (1) existing data, (2) new systems development and
(3) database redesign. Database designs from existing data may be based on data in spreadsheets
or other data tables, or on data extracted from other databases. New systems development gathers
user requirements for needed applications and designs a database to meet those requirements.
Database redesign may be needed to migrate existing databases to a newer DBMS, or to integrate
multiple existing databases.

23
100) Briefly describe the history of database processing.
Answer: The predecessor of database processing was file processing, where data were
maintained on magnetic tape. Database processing as we know it today became possible with the
availability of direct access disk storage in the 1960s. Using this storage, both the hierarchical
and network data model were developed. In 1970, E. F. Codd of IBM proposed the relational
model, which is the standard model used today. Current DBMSs such as DB2, Oracle and SQL
Server are based on the relational model. The appearance of microcomputer-based DBMSs in the
1980s led to a "bloodbath" from which Microsoft Access emerged as the dominant PC
workstation DBMS. More recent events include the introduction of object-oriented DBMSs
(OODBMSs), and the development of tools such as XML to allow the use of database systems
over the Internet.

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unfilial Arnold had wallowed in grease, not offering out of his
abundance one slim finger of sparsely besmeared toast to his dry
and yearning father, but the Doña had not cast in his direction one
glance of pity—and it was his birthday, too!... oh that Arnold! Who
was it ... Harry or Guy ... anyway he had heard some one saying
that every father feels like a Frankenstein before a grown-up son ...
well, not many of them had as much cause as he had ... despised,
snubbed whenever he opened his mouth. Oh damn that Arnold! In
what did he consider his great superiority to lie? Curious thing how
his luck had always been so bad: he had not got into the Fifteen at
Rugby because he had put his knee out—so he said; he had failed to
get a scholarship at Trinity because his coach had given him the
wrong text-book on constitutional history—so he said; he had only
got a second in his tripos, because the Cambridge school of history
was beneath contempt—so he said. And then the War and all the
appalling fuss about him—really, one would have thought he was
fighting the Germans single-handed! And Dick, creeping about with
his tail between his legs and being made to feel a criminal every
time he smiled or forgot for a second that Arnold was in the trenches
... and, anyhow, if he had been so wonderful, why hadn’t he the
V.C., or at least the Military Cross?
Arnold was a fraud ... and a damned impertinent one! Well, it was
his mother’s fault ... mothers were Bolsheviks, yes, Bolsheviks—by
secret propaganda begun in the nursery setting the members of a
family against their head. He was nothing to his children—nothing.
Just for a second he got a whiff of the sweet, nauseating,
vertiginous, emotion he had experienced at the birth of each of them
in turn—an emotion rather like the combined odours of eau de
Cologne and chloroform; an emotion which, like all the most
poignant ones, had a strong flavouring of sadism; for it sprang from
the strange fierce pleasure of knowing that the body he loved was
being tortured to bear his children.
Yes, he had loved her ... there had been times ... well, was he
going to put up with it for ever? Oh, how badly he had been used.

Then it would all begin over again.
Finally he came to a resolution, the daring of which (such is the
force of habit) half frightened him, while it made his eyes in their
turn bright and shining with pleasure.
3
The fire of October, which had first been kindled in a crimson
semicircle of beeches burning through a blanket of mist on the
outskirts of Plasencia, spread, a slow contagion, over all the land.
The birch saplings in the garden became the colour of bracken. The
border was gold and amethyst with chrysanthemums and
Michaelmas daisies. And in the fields there lingered poppies, which
of all flowers look the frailest, yet which are the last to go.
Imperceptibly, the breach widened between Teresa and Concha;
Concha had now completely given up pretending that their
relationship was an affectionate one, and they rarely spoke to each
other.
It was evident, too, that the lack of harmony between their
parents, noticeable since Pepa’s death, had recently become more
pronounced.
Dick was often absent for days at a time; and one day Teresa
happening to go into the Doña’s morning-room found her sitting on
the sofa looking angry and troubled, a letter on her lap. Teresa took
the letter—the Doña offering no protest—and read it. I was a bill to
Dick from a London jeweller for a string of pearls. Puzzled, she
looked questioningly at the Doña, who merely shrugged her
shoulders.
In the servant’s hall, too, there seemed to be discord, rumours of
which drifted upstairs via Parker the maid, Parker had a way of
beginning in the middle, which made her plot difficult to follow, but
which perhaps had a certain value as a method of expressing such

irrational things as the entanglement of primitive emotions. Her
stories were like this: “And she said: ‘see you don’t get Minchin in
the garden,’ and Mrs. Rudge said, ‘oh then some one else’s name
would be Walker’; and I said, ‘if Dale hadn’t been killed in the War
he would be in your cottage and that’s what the War has done for
you!’ and I said, ‘you’ve children, Mrs. Rudge,’ I said, ‘and I hope it
won’t come knocking at your door some day,’ and Lily said, ‘trust
Parker to be after an unmarried man,’ and I said, ‘don’t be so rude,
Lily, it’s Nosey Parker yourself ... even though I don’t go to chapel!’
That was one for Mrs. Rudge, you see: oh, they’re a set of
beauties!”
The previous head-gardener, Dale, for whom the middle-aged
Parker had had a tendresse, had been killed in the War. She looked
askance at his successor Rudge for wearing dead men’s shoes, and
for being that unpardonable thing—a married man; and into the
bargain he was a dissenter. Then there was Minchin, the handsome
cowman, whom Dick was thinking of putting into the garden....
It was all very complicated; but seeing that light is sometimes
thrown on the psychology of the hyper-civilised by the researches of
anthropologists among Bantus and Red Indians, perhaps these tales
of Parker deserved a certain attention—at any rate, behind them
there loomed three tremendous forces: sex, religion and the dead....
One day, to the surprise of every one but the Doña, there arrived
in time for dinner Dick’s dearest friend, Hugh Mallam.
He was a huge shaggy creature, if possible, more boyish than
Dick. He and Dick were delighted at seeing each other, for Hugh
lived in Devonshire and rarely came as far north as Plasencia, and all
through dinner plied each other with old jokes and old memories;
and from the roars of laughter that reached the drawing-room after
they had been left to themselves they were evidently enjoying
themselves extremely over their port wine.

The next morning Teresa coming into the morning-room, found
the Doña and Hugh standing before the fire, the Doña looking angry
and scornful while Hugh, in an instructive and slightly irritated voice,
was saying: “Sorry, Doña, but I can’t help it ... I can’t help being the
same sort of person with Dick that I’ve always been ... it’s like that
... I know it’s very wrong of him and all that, but I can’t help being
the same sort of person with him I’ve always been ... I....”
“Yes, yes, Hugh, you’ve said that before. But do you realise what a
serious thing it is for me and the children? You seemed very shocked
and sympathetic in your letter—for one thing, a family man simply
can’t afford to spend these sums; then there’s the scandal—so bad
for the business and Arnold ... and you promised me yesterday....”
“I know, but I tell you, as soon as I saw old Dick I knew that I
couldn’t lecture him, one can’t change.... I can’t help being the same
sort of person with him I’ve always been. But I really am most
awfully sorry about it all—the old blackguard!”
“Well, if you hear that we are ruined, perhaps you’ll be sorrier
still.”
“That won’t happen—no tragedies ever happen to any one who
has anything to do with me—ha! ha! They couldn’t, could they,
Teresa? I’m much too——”
“Hush!” said the Doña sharply, suddenly noticing the presence of
Teresa; and, with a look of extreme relief, Hugh slunk through the
French window into the garden.
So the Doña had actually been trying to turn Hugh into their
father’s mentor! It was not like her; she was much too wise not to
know that the incorrigibly frivolous Hugh was quite unsuited to the
part.
Parallel with the infallible wisdom that is the fruit of our own
personal experience, there lie the waste products of the world’s
experience—facile generalisations, clichés, and so on. Half the follies
of mankind are due to forming our actions along this line instead of
along the other. There, Dick and Hugh were not two human beings,

therefore unique and inimitable, but ‘old school friends’—and to
whose gentle pressure back to the narrow way is one more likely to
yield than to that of an ‘old school friend’?
But the very fact of the wise Doña acquiescing in such a stale
fallacy, told of desperation and the clutching at straws.
Of course, Hugh was perfectly right—the shape and colour of his
relationship with Dick had been fixed fifty years ago at the dame’s
school in Kensington, to spring up unchanged all through the years
at each fresh meeting. They could not change it; why, you might as
well go and tell an oak that this spring it was to weave its leaves on
the loom of the elms.
He had been right, too, in saying there would be no catastrophe.
The fate of Pompeii—a sudden melodramatic blotting out of little
familiar things—would never, she felt sure, overtake Plasencia.
Things at Plasencia happened very slowly, by means of a long series
of anticlimaxes.
4
As they sat on the loggia that afternoon reading their letters after
tea, Concha suddenly exclaimed, “Well I’m blessed!” and laying
down her letter began to laugh.
“Well?” said the Doña.
“It’s that excellent David Munroe!”
“What about him?”
“He writes to say that he’s chucking business and everything, and
is going at once into a seminary to prepare for ordination—it seems
too comical!”
The Doña’s expression was one of mingled disappointment and
interest; while Jollypot’s cheeks went pink with excitement. They
began to press Concha for details.

As to Teresa—somehow or other it gave her a disagreeable shock.
Of course, every year hundreds of young men all over the world
had a vocation, went to a seminary, and, in due time, said their first
mass—she ought to be used to it; nevertheless, she felt there was
something ... something unnatural in the news: a young man who
had business connections with her father, and gave Concha dinner at
the Savoy, and danced to the gramophone—and then, suddenly
hearing this ... she got the same impression that she did in Paris
from a sudden vision of the white ghostly minarets of the Sacré-
Cœur, doubtless beautiful in themselves, but incongruous in design,
and associations, and hence displeasing in that gray-green, stucco,
and admirably classical city.
The others drifted off to their various business, and Teresa sat on,
looking at the view.
It was one of these misty October days when every landscape
looks so magnificent, that, given pencil, brush, and the power of
copying what one sees, it almost seems that any one, without going
through the eclectic process of creation, could paint a great picture.
The colours were blurred as if the intervening atmosphere were a
sheet of bad glass; and the relationship between the old rose of
ploughed fields, the yellow strips of mustard, and the brighter gold
and pink of the sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and Michaelmas
daisies in the border, made one think of an oriental vase painted
with dim blossoms and butterflies in which is arranged a nosegay of
bright and freshly plucked flowers—the paintings on the porcelain
melting into the flowers, the flowers vivifying the colours on the
porcelain.
That is what the relationship between life and art should be like,
she thought, art the nosegay, life the porcelain vase.
Life could not be shot on the wing—it must first be frozen....
Myths that simplified and transposed so that things became as the
chairs and sofa had been that day in her Chelsea lodgings ... heliacal
periods ... Apollo and Dionysus ... it was all the same thing. If only

she could find it, life at Plasencia had some design, some plot ... yes,
that was it—a plot that enlarged and simplified things so that they
could be seen.
What was life at Plasencia like? A motley hostile company sailing
together in a ship as in Cervantes’s Persiles?
No; it still had roots; night and day it still stared at the same view;
externally, it was immobile. It was more like a convent than a ship,
an ill-matched company forced to live together under one roof,
which one and all they long to leave.
A sense of discomfort came over her at the word “convent”: long
bare corridors hung with hideous lithographs; hard cold beds;
shrewish vulgar-tongued bells summoning one to smoked fish; an
insipid calligraphy; “that by the intercession of Blessed Madeleine
Sophie Barat, Virgin, through her devotion to thy Sacred Heart” ... it
certainly had ambivalence—it was the great Catholic art she had
tried to define to herself when confronted with doubting Anna; but it
was not Plasencia.
“Nunnery” was a better word, a compact warm word, suggesting
hives and the mysterious activities of bees ... it had an archaic ring
too ... yes, art always exists in the past (if not why is the present
tense never used?)—it is the present seen as the past.
A nunnery, then, long ago—Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, as a full-blown
carnation splits its calyx, her beauty bursting through her novice’s
habit, receiving in the nunnery parlour all the amorous youth of
Naples. And yet it was not the same as if she had received them in a
boudoir of the world. The nunnery’s rule might be lax but it
remained a rule; and that, artistically, was of very great value—vivid
earthly passion seen against the pale tracery of Laud, Nones,
Vespers. And at Plasencia too—out there in the view life was enacted
against a background of Hours: ver, aetas, autumnus, hiems—to call
them by their Latin names made them at once liturgical.
A nunnery, long ago ... where? Not in Italy; for that would be out
of harmony with the colour scheme of Plasencia—not so with Spain,

from the stuff of which they were knit, so many of them. A Spanish
play (because a play is the best vehicle for a plot) much more
brightly coloured than Plasencia, “Cherubimic,” as manuscripts
illuminated in very bright colours used to be called ... the action not
merely in Spain, but in their own Seville ... Moorish Seville ... hence
a play, written like the letters to Queen Elizabeth from eastern
potentates, “on paper which doth smell most fragrantly of camphor
and ambergris, and the ink of perfect musk.”
And the plot? Well, that was not yet visible; but the forces behind
it would be sex, religion, and the dead.
5
October turned into November. At first some belated
chrysanthemums, penstemmons, and gentians, kept the flag of the
border gallantly flying; then Rudge cut it down to the bare wood of
stalks a few inches high, which showed between them the brown of
the earth.
Out in the country, for a time, a pink and gold spray of wild briar
garlanded here and there the thorny withered hedges; and then
their only ornament became the red breast of an occasional robin,
his plump body balanced on his thin hairy legs, which were like the
stalks of the tiny Cheshire pinks that one sees in rock gardens.
Everywhere the earth was becoming depalliated and self-coloured;
and on one of her walks Teresa came upon a pathetic heap of
feathers.
In autumn the oriflamme of the spectrum had been red; now it
was blue—a corrugated iron roof, for instance. And soon the whole
land was wintry and blue; a blue not of vegetation but of light, light,
which lay in hollows like patches of blue-bells, which glinted along
the wet surface of the high road, turning it into an azure river upon
which lay, like yellow fritillaries, the golden dung dropped by calves

led to market; and through the golden birches the view, too, lay
delicate and blue.
Then black and white days would come, when the sun looked like
the moon, and a group of trees like a sketch in charcoal of a distant
city.
There was nothing new at Plasencia: Dick still sulked at meals; the
Doña’s face was cold and set; Concha was distraite and went a great
deal to London; Parker complained of the Rudges; only Jollypot and
’Snice went their ways in an apparently unclouded serenity.
Teresa was absorbed by a weekly parcel of books from the London
Library; charming mediæval books in that pretty state of
decomposition when literature is turning into history and has
become self-coloured, the words serving the double purpose of
telling a tale and of illuminating it with small brightly coloured
pictures, like the toys in the pack of Claudel’s Saint Nicholas:—
Il suffit que j’y fasse un trou et j’y vois des choses vivantes et
toutes petites
Le Déluge, le Veau d’Or, et la punition des Israélites....
Of Seville she already knew enough to serve her purpose, having
several years before, during a winter she had spent there with her
mother’s sister, gone every morning to the University to read in the
public library; and, as it contains but few books of later date than
the eighteenth century, she had read there many a quaint work on
the history and customs of old Seville. And, fascinated by its
persistent Moorish past, she had dipped a little into the curious
decorative grammar of the Arabs, in which, so it seemed to her,
infinitives, and participles, and adjectives, are regarded as variations
of an ever-recurring design of leaf or scroll in a vast arabesque
adorning the walls of a mosque.

Looking over the notes she had made at that time, under the
heading Spanish Chestnuts she came upon two little fables she had
written on the model of the Arab apologues which were circulated
during the Middle Ages all over Spain; and, with the dislike of waste
that is so often a characteristic of the artist, she decided that, if it
were possible, she would make use of them in the unwritten play.
Like every other visitor to Seville she had been haunted by that
strange figure, more Moor than Christian, Pedro the Cruel; for,
materially and spiritually, his impress is everywhere on the city—
there are streets that still bear the names of his Jewish concubines,
the popular ballads still sing of his justice, his cruelty, and his tragic
death; while his eternal monument is the great Moorish palace of
the Alcazar within whose walls Charles-Quint himself, though his
home was half of Europe, remained ever an alien—it is still stained
by his blood, and in its garden, through the water of her marble
bath, the limbs of his love, Maria Padilla, still gleam white to the
moon.
So it was natural that she should fix upon his reign as the period
of the play; and hence, though she read promiscuously the literature
of the Middle Ages, her focus was the fourteenth century.
All the same, she had qualms. Might she not “queer her pitch” by
all this reading? A sense of the Past could not be distilled from a
mass of antiquarian details; it was just because the Present was so
rank with details that, by putting it in the Past, she was trying to see
it clean and new. A sense of the Past is an emotion that is sudden,
and swift, and perishable—a flash of purple-red among dark trees
and bracken as one rushes past in a motor-car, and it is already half
a mile behind before one realises that it was rhododendrons in full
flower, and had one had time to explore the park one would have
found its acres of shade all riddled with them, saturated with them.
An impression like this is not to hold or to bind. And yet ... she had
seen a picture by Monticelli, called François I. et les dames de sa
cour, of which the thick flakes of dark, rich colour, if you but stood
far enough away, glimmered into dim shapes of ladies in flowered

silks and brocades, against a background of boscage clustering
round a figure both brave and satyr-like—the king. Something dim
and gleaming; fragmentary as De Quincey’s dream.
“Often I used to see a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and
dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, ‘These are English
ladies from the unhappy time of Charles I.’ The ladies danced and
looked as lovely as the Court of George IV., yet I knew, even in my
dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries.”
Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for
nearly two centuries—yes, that was it. You must make your readers
feel that they are having a waking vision; and your words must be
“lonely,” like Virgil’s; they must be halting and fragmentary and
whispered.
Nevertheless she went on with her reading, and, as though from
among the many brasses of knights with which is inset the aisle of
some church, their thinly traced outlines blurred and rubbed by time
and countless feet, one particular one were slowly to thicken to a
bas-relief, then swell into a statue in the round, then come to life—
gray eyes glittering through the vizor, delicately chased armour
clanking, the church echoing to oaths in Norman-French,—so
gradually from among the flat, uniform, sleeping years of the Middle
Ages did the fourteenth century come to life in Teresa’s mind.
Beyond the Pyrenees it was a period of transition—faith was on
the wane. She found a symbol of the age in Boccaccio’s vow made
not at the shrine of a saint, but at Virgil’s grave; not a vow to wear a
hair-shirt or to die fighting the Saracens, but to dedicate all his life to
the art of letters. And, when terrified by the message from the
death-bed of Blessed Pietro Pietroni, he came near to breaking his
vow and falling backwards into the shadows, in the humane sanity
of Petrarch’s letter—making rhetoric harsh and mysticism vulgar—
she heard the unmistakable note of the Renaissance.
And in France, too, the writer of the second part of the Roman de
la Rose has earned the title of “le Voltaire du moyen age.”

But on the other side of the Pyrenees the echo of this new spirit
was but very faint.
Shut in between the rock of Gibraltar and by these same Pyrenees
sits Our Lady of the Rocks, Faith ... alone; for heresies (Calvinism
being the great exception) are, Teresa came to see, but the turning
away of the frailer sisters, Hope and Charity, from the petrifying
stare of their Gorgon but most beautiful sister.
But in those days, though as stern, she was a plainer Faith. It was
not till after the Council of Trent that she developed the repellent
beauty of a great picture: the tortured conversion of St. Ignatius de
Loyóla, the Greco-esque visions of Santa Teresa de Jesùs, the
gloating grinning crowd in the Zocodover of Toledo lit up by the
flames of an auto-da-fé into one of the goblin visions of Goya, were
still but tiny seeds, broadcast and sleeping. Catholicism had not yet
lost the monumental austerity of the primitive Church; its blazon was
still the Tree of the Fall and the Redemption springing from Peter’s
rock.
But, all the time, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, woven by the
“angelic doctor” round the Sacrifice of the Mass, was slowly, surely
coming to its own, and Jehovah was turning into the Lord God of the
Host.

CHAPTER V
1
Dr. Sinclair and the children, Guy, Rory, and, of course, Arnold,
were to spend Christmas at Plasencia.
By tea-time on the twenty-third they had all arrived except Rory,
who was motoring down from Aldershot in his little “two-seater.”
Harry Sinclair, a big massive brown man, his fine head covered
with crisp curls, was standing on the hearth-rug devouring hunks of
iced cake and, completely indifferent as to whether he had an
audience or not, was, in his own peculiar style—hesitating attacks,
gropings for the right word which, when found, were trumpeted,
bellowed, rather than uttered—delivering a lecture of great wit and
acumen.
The Doña and Arnold—he scowling heavily—were talking in low
tones on the outskirts of the circle; while Dick would eye them from
time to time uneasily from his arm-chair.
The children—to celebrate their arrival—were having tea in the
drawing-room, and both were extremely excited.
Anna’s passion for stamps was on the wane, and she no longer
dreamed of Lincoln’s album so bulgy that it would not shut. She was
now collecting the Waverley Novels in a uniform edition of small
volumes, bound in hard green board and printed upon India paper;
and following some mysterious sequence of her own that had
nothing to do with chronology, she had “only got as far as the
Talisman.” She was wondering if there was time before Christmas
Day to convey to the Doña—very delicately of course—in what
directions her desires now lay.

“The ... er ... chief merit of Shakespeare is that he is so ... er ...
admirably ... er ... prosaic. The qualities we call prosaic exist only in
verse, and vice versa....” (“How funny!” thought Anna, both pleased
and puzzled, “Daddy is talking about Vice Versa.” She was herself
just then in the middle of Anstey’s Vice Versa.) “For instance ... er ...
the finest fragments of Sappho are ... er ... merely an ... er ...
unadorned statement of facts! Don’t you agree, Cust?”
This purely rhetorical appeal elicited from Guy a shrieking
summary of his own views on poetry; Harry’s eyes roving the while
restlessly over the room, while now and then he gave an impatient
grunt.
In the meantime tea and cake were going to Jasper’s head. He
began to wriggle in his chair, and pretend to be a pig gobbling in a
trough. As the grown-ups were too occupied to pay any attention, it
was Anna who had to say: “Jasper! Don’t be silly.”
But he was not to be daunted by Anna; drawing one finger down
the side of his nose he squealed out in the strange pronunciation he
affected when over-excited: “Play Miss Fyles-Smith come down my
nose!” (Miss Fyles-Smith, it may be remembered, was the “lady
professor” who sometimes worked with Dr. Sinclair.)
The Doña stopped suddenly in the middle of something she was
saying to Arnold, raised her lorgnette, and looked at Harry; he was
frowning, and, with an impatient jerk of the head, turned again to
Guy: “Well, as I was saying, Cust....”
It might, of course, be interpreted quite simply as merely
momentarily irritation at the idiotic interruption.
“You see,” began Anna in laborious explanation, “he pretends that
there’s a real Miss Fyles-Smith and a pretence one, and the pretence
one is called ‘play Miss Fyles-Smith,’ and whenever he gets silly he
wants people to come down his nose, and....”
Then there was a laugh in the hall, discreetly echoed by Rendall
the butler.

“Hallo! That’s Rory,” said Concha, and ran out into the hall.
Teresa felt herself stiffening into an attitude of hostile criticism.
“Here he is!”
First entry of the jeune premier in a musical play:
“Well, guuurls, here we are again,” while the Beauty Chorus
crowds round him and he chucks the prettiest one under the chin.
Then—bang! squeak! pop! goes the orchestra and, running right up
to the footlights, the smirking chorus massed behind him, he begins
half singing, half speaking:
When I came back from sea
The guuurls were waiting for me.
Well, at last it was over and he was sitting at a little table eating
muffins and blackberry jam.
“What have I been doing, Mrs. Lane? Oh, I’ve been leading a
blameless life,” and then he grinned and, Teresa was convinced,
simultaneously caught her eye, the Doña’s, Concha’s, and Jollypot’s.
She remembered when they were children how on their visits to
the National Portrait Gallery, Jollypot used to explain to them that
the only test of a portrait’s having been painted by a great master
was whether the eyes seemed simultaneously fixed upon every one
in the room; and they would all rush off to different corners of the
gallery, and the eyes would certainly follow every one of them. The
eyes of a male flirt have the same mysterious ubiquity.
“I do think it’s most extraordinary good of you to have me here for
Christmas. I feel it’s frightful cheek for such a new friend, but I
simply hadn’t the strength of mind to refuse—I did so want to come.
I know I ought to have gone up to Scotland, but my uncle really
much prefers having his goose to himself. He’s a sort of Old Father

William, you know, can eat it up beak and all.... Yes, the shops are
looking jolly. I got stuck with the little car in a queue in Regent
Street the other day and I longed to jump out and smash the
windows and loot everything I saw. I say, Guy, you ought to write a
poem about Christmas shops....”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it is an amazing flora and fauna,” cried
Guy, moving away from Harry and the fire: “Sucking pigs with
oranges in their mouths, toy giraffes ... and all these frocks—Redfern
mysteriously blossoming as though it were St. John’s Eve, the
wassail-bowl of Revell crowned with imitation flowers....”
“Go it! Go it!” laughed Rory.
“Oh Rory, it was too priceless—do you remember that exquisite
mannequin at Revell’s, a lovely thing with heavenly ankles? Well, the
other day I was at the Berkeley with Frida and ...” and Concha
successfully narrowed his attention into a channel of her own
digging.
What energy to dig channels, to be continually on the alert, to
fight!
Much better, like Horace’s arena-wearied gladiator, to seek the
rudis of dismissal.
The Doña made a little sign to Arnold, and they both got up and
left the room, Dick suspiciously following them with his eyes.
The talk and laughter like waves went on beating round Teresa.
Now Guy was turning frantic glances towards her and talking
louder and more shrilly than usual—evidently he thought he was
saying something particularly brilliant, and wanted her to hear it.
“Bergson seems to look upon the intellectuals as so many half-
witted old colonels, living in a sort of Bath, at any rate a geometrical
town—all squares and things, and each square built by a philosopher
or school of thought: Berkeley Square, Russell Square, Oxford
Crescent....”

“Well, the War did one good thing, at any rate, it silenced
Bergson,” said Harry impatiently, “I don’t think he has any influence
now, but not being er ... er ... a Fellow of King’s, I’m not well up in
what ... er ... the young are thinking.”
“Oh well, here are the young—you’d better ask ’em,” chuckled
Dick, since the departure of his wife and son, once more quite
natural and genial: “Anna, do you read Bergson?”
“No!” she answered sulkily and a little scornfully—she liked the
“grown-ups” to pay her attention, but not that sort of attention.
“There you are, Harry!” chuckled Dick triumphantly; though what
his cause was for triumph must remain a mystery.
“Quite right, old thing! I don’t read him either—much too deep for
you and me. What are you reading just now?” said Rory, beckoning
her to his side.
She at once became friendly again: “I’m reading Vice Versa,” and
she chuckled reminiscently, “And ... I’ve just finished the Talisman ...
and I’d like to read Kenilworth.”
What a pity the Doña was not there to hear! But perhaps one of
them would tell her what she had said, and she would guess.
“Which do you like best, Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard
Bultitude?” asked Guy.
“Richard Bultitude!” laughed Rory scornfully, “Do you hear that,
Anna? He thinks the old buffer’s name was Richard! But we know
better; we know it was Paul, don’t we?”
Anna would have liked to have shared with Rory an appearance of
superior knowledge; but honesty forced her to say: “Oh but the little
boy was Richard Bultitude—Dickie, you know; his real name was
Richard.”
“There, Rory! There!” shouted Guy triumphantly.
“Do you remember that girl’s—I can’t remember her name, that
one that shoots a billet-doux at Mr. Bultitude in church—well, her

papa, the old boy that gave the responses all wrong ‘in a loud
confident voice,’ doesn’t he remind you rather of Uncle Jimmy?” said
Rory to Guy.
“The best character in ... er ... that book is the German master,
who ... er ...” began Harry.
“Oh yes, a heavenly creature—‘I veel make a leetle choke to
agompany it’!” shrieked Concha.
“I hate Dulcie—I think she’s silly,” said Anna; but no one was
listening to her, they were launched upon a “grown-up” discussion of
Vice Versa that might last them till it was time to dress for dinner ...
a rosy English company, red-mufflered, gaitered, bottle-green-
coated, with shrieks of laughter keeping the slide “boiling” in the
neighbourhood of Dingley Dell.
Teresa, as usual, sitting apart, felt in despair—what could be done
with such material? A ceaseless shower of insignificant un-co-related
events, and casual, ephemeral talk ... she must not submit to the
tyranny of detail, the gluttony that wanted everything ... she must
mythologise, ruthlessly prune ... hacking away through the thick
foliage of words, chopping off the superfluous characters, so that at
last the plot should become visible.
Anna, rather resenting that what she looked upon as a children’s
book should be commandeered by the grown-ups for their own silly
talk in which she could not share, went off to the billiard-room to
play herself tunes on the gramophone.
Jasper had long since sneaked off with ’Snice for a second tea in
the kitchen.
Then Guy left the group of Anstey amateurs and came and sat
down beside Teresa.
“Have you been reading anything?” he asked; and without waiting
for an answer, and slightly colouring, he said eagerly: “I’ve been
learning Spanish, you know.”
“Have you? Do you like it?”

And that was all! How often had he rehearsed the conversation,
or, rather, the disquisition, that ought at this point to have arisen:
“Those who know the delicate sophistication of Lazarillo de Tormes
feel less amazement when from an Amadis-pastoral Euphues-rotted
Europe an urbane yet compelling voice begins very quietly: ‘In a
village of la Mancha, the name of which I do not care to recollect,
there lived not long ago a knight’....”
And surely she might have shown a little emotion—was it not just
a little touching that entirely for her sake he should have taken the
trouble to learn Spanish?
“Well, what have you been reading in Spanish—the Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”
Though this was only a joke, he felt sore and nettled, and said
sulkily: “What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“You lie, Guy, you lie! You have heard of the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, and you have heard of If Winter Comes; because from
what you tell me of your parents they probably talk of both
incessantly, and....”
“You’re quite right, as a matter of fact,” laughed Guy, delighted
that she should remember what he had told her about the manners
and customs of his parents, “they talked of nothing else at one time.
It made them feel that at last they were able to understand and
sympathise with what my generation was after. My father began one
night at dinner, ‘Very interesting book that, Guy, If Winter Comes—
very well written book, very clever; curious book—painful though,
painful!’ And my mother tried to discuss some one called Mabel’s
character with me. It was no good my saying I hadn’t read it—it only
made them despise me and think I wasn’t dans le mouvement, after
all.”
“There, you see!” laughed Teresa; “Well, what are you reading in
Spanish?”
“Calderon’s Autos,” and then he launched into one of his excited
breathless disquisitions: “As a matter of fact, I was rather

disappointed at first. I knew, of course, that they were written in
glorification of the Eucharist and that they were bound to be
symbolic, and ‘flowery and starry,’ and all the rest of it—man very
tiny in comparison with the sun and the moon and the stars and the
Cross—but the unregenerate part of me—I suppose it’s some old
childhood’s complex—has a secret craving for genre. Every fairy
story I read when I was a child was a disappointment till I came
upon Morris’s Prose Romances, and then at last I found three
dimensional knights and princesses, and a whole fairy countryside
where things went on happening even when Morris and I weren’t
looking at them: cows being milked, horses being shod, lovers
wandering in lanes; and one knew every hill and every tree, and
could take the short cut from one village to another in the dark. And
I’d hoped, secretly, that the autos were going to be a little bit like
that ... that the characters would be at once abstractions—Grace,
the Mosaic Law, and so on—and at the same time real seventeenth
century Spaniards, as solid as Sancho Panza, gossiping in taverns,
and smelling of dung and garlic. But, of course, I came to see that
the real thing was infinitely finer—the plays of a theologian, a priest
who had listened in the confessional to disembodied voices
whispering their sins, and who kept, like a bird in a cage, a poet’s
soul among the scholastic traditions of his intellect, so that gothic
decorations flower all round the figure of Theology, as in some
Spanish Cathedral ...” he paused to take breath, and then added: “I
say—I thought you wouldn’t mind—but I’ve brought you for
Christmas an edition of the Autos—I think you’ll like them.”
“Thank you ever so much, I should love to read them,” said Teresa
with unusual warmth.
She had been considerably excited by what he had said. An auto
that was at once realistic and allegorical—there were possibilities in
the idea.
She sat silent for a few seconds, thinking; and then she became
conscious of Harry’s voice holding forth on some topic to the group
round the fire: “... really ... er ... a ... er ... tragic conflict. The one

thing that gave colour and ... er ... significance to her drab
spinsterhood was the conviction that these experiences were
supernatural. The spiritual communion ... the ... er ... er ... in fact
the conversations with the invisible ‘Friend’ became more and more
frequent, and more and more ... er ... satisfying, and indeed of
nightly occurrence. Then she happened to read a book by Freud or
some one and ... er ... the fat was in the fire—or, rather, something
that undergoes a long period of smouldering before it breaks into
flames was in the fire. Remember, she was nearly fifty, and a Swiss
Calvinist, but she had really remarkable intellectual pluck. Slowly she
began to test her mystical experiences by the theories of Freud and
Co., and was forced in time to admit that they sprang entirely from
... er ... suppressed ... er ... er ... erotic desires. I gather the modern
school of psychologists hold all so-called mystical experiences do.
Leuba said....”
Here Jollypot, who had been sitting in a corner with her crochet, a
silent listener, got up, very white and wide-eyed, and left the room.
Teresa’s heart contracted. They were ruthless creatures, that
English fire-lit band—tearing up Innocence, while its roots shrieked
like those of a mandrake.
But she had got a sudden glimpse into the inner life of Jollypot.
Then she too, left the room; as for once the talk had been
pregnant, and she wanted to think.
Sexual desires concealed under mystical experiences ... a
Eucharistic play. Unamuno said that the Eucharist owed its potency
to the fact that it stood for immortality, for life. But it was also, she
realised, the “bread not made of wheat,” therefore it must stand for
the man-made things as well—these vain yet lovely yearnings that
differentiate him from flowers and beasts, and which are apt to run
counter to the life he shares with these. The Eucharist, then, could
stand either for life, the blind biological force, or for the enemy of
life—the dreams and shadows that haunt the soul of man; the

enemy of that blind biological force, yes, but also its flower, because
it grows out of it....
2
The days of Christmas week passed in walks, dancing, and talk in
the billiard-room.
On Christmas Day Rory had given Concha a volume of the Harrow
songs with music, and to the Doña an exquisite ivory hand-painted
eighteenth-century fan with which she was extremely pleased;
indeed, to Teresa’s surprise, he had managed to get into her good
graces, and they had started a little relationship of their own
consisting of mock gallantry on his side and good-natured irony on
hers.
As to Concha, she had taken complete possession of him and
seemed to know as much about his relations—“Uncle Jimmy,” “old
Lionel Fane” and the rest of them—as he did himself; she knew, too,
who had been his fag at Harrow and the names of all his brother
officers; in fact, the sort of things that, hitherto, she had only known
about Arnold; and Arnold evidently was not overpleased.
One day a little incident occurred in connection with Arnold that
touched Teresa very much. Happening to want something out of her
room she found its entry barred by him and the Doña, she
superintending, while he was nailing on to the door a small piece of
canvas embroidered with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
“We won’t be a minute,” said the Doña serenely; and Arnold,
scowling and rather red, silently finished his job. By the end of the
morning there was not a room in the house that had not the Sacred
Heart nailed on its door. Dick being by this time too cowed to
protest.
Teresa knew how Arnold must have loathed it; but he evidently
meant by his co-operation to make it clear once and for all that he

was on his mother’s side in the present crisis as opposed to his
father’s.
In connection with the undercurrent of life at Plasencia, another
little scene is perhaps worth recording.
“By the way, Guy,” said Rory, one morning they were sitting in the
billiard-room, “How are Uncle Roger and Aunt May getting on in
Pau?”
“Oh, same old thing—mother plays croquet and goes to the
English Church, and father plays golf and goes to the English Club.
Sometimes they motor over to Biarritz to lunch with friends—and
that’s about all!”
“Well, and a jolly good life too! That’s how I’ll spend the winter
when I’m old, only I won’t go to Pau, I’ll go to Nice—there’s a better
casino. And what’s more, I’ll drag you there, Guy. It would do him a
lot of good, wouldn’t it, Miss Lane?” and Rory grinned at Teresa,
who, staring at Guy critically through narrowed eyes, said: “I don’t
think he’ll need any dragging. I can see him when he’s old—an
extremely mondain figure in white spats, constantly drinking tea
with duchesses, and writing his memoirs.”
Guy looked at her suspiciously—Mallock, certainly, drank tea with
duchesses and wrote his memoirs; not a bad writer, Mallock! But
probably Teresa despised him; Swinburne had been a dapper
mondain figure in his youth—what did she mean exactly?
“Poor old Guy!” laughed Rory, “I can see him, too—a crusty old
Tory, very severe on the young and their idiotic poetry.... I expect
you’re a violent Socialist, Miss Lane, ain’t you?”
Foolish, conventional young man, going round sticking labels on
every one! Well, so she was labelled “a Socialist,” and that meant
“high-browed,” and undesirable; But why on earth did she mind?
Concha was looking at her with rather a curious little smile. She
sometimes had an uncomfortable feeling that Concha was as good
at reading her thoughts as she was as reading Concha’s.

“She is a Socialist like you, isn’t she, Guy?” persisted Rory.
“He means an intellectual character,” explained Guy, not ill-
pleased.
“No, but you do want to blow us all up, don’t you?”
“Do I?” said Teresa coldly.
“Well, I believe I’m a Bolshevik myself, a revolution would be my
only chance of getting into the Guards. ‘Hell-for-leather Dundas of
the Red Guards!’ It sounds like a hero by ... that mad woman our
mothers knew in Florence, Guy—what was her name?... Yes, like a
hero in a Ouida novel.”
“Do I hear you say, Dundas, that you think yourself like one of ...
er ... Ouida’s heroes?” said Harry Sinclair, coming in at that moment
with Dick.
“Well, sir, modesty forbids me to say so in so many words,”
grinned Rory.
“There used to be an aged don at Cambridge,” continued Harry,
“half-blind, wholly deaf, and with an ... er ... game ... leg, and when
he was asked to what character in history he felt most akin he
answered ... er ... er ‘alcibiades’!”
“That was old Potter, wasn’t it? I remember ...” began Dick, but
Concha interrupted him by exclaiming eagerly: “What a good game!
Let’s play it—history or fiction, but we mustn’t say our own, we must
guess each other’s’—Rory is settled, he thinks himself like a Ouida
hero ...” and she suddenly broke off, turned red, and looked at
Teresa with that glazed opaque look in her eyes, that with her was a
sign of mingled embarrassment and defiance.
Teresa’s heart began to beat a little faster; who would Concha say
she, Teresa, thought herself like? And who would she say Concha
thought herself like? It would perhaps be a relief to them both to
say, for once, things that were definitely spiteful—a relief from this
continual X-raying of each other’s thoughts, and never a word said.

“Who does Guy think himself like? Some one very wicked and
beautiful—don’t you, Guy?” said Rory.
“Dorian Gray!” said Arnold, looking up from his book with a
meaning grin.
“Oh no, no, I’m sure it’s some very literary character,” said Concha.
“Shelley?” suggested Teresa; but she gave the little smile that
always seemed scornful to Guy.
“Percy Bysshe ... is she right, Guy?”
“No,” said Guy sulkily.
“Shakespeare—Tennyson—Burns? Who, then?”
“Oh, Keats if you like—when he was in love with Fanny Brawne,”
cried Guy furiously, and, seizing the book that lay nearest to him, he
began to read it.
“I say, this is a lovely game—almost as good as cock-fighting!”
said Rory: “What about Mr. Lane? I wonder who you think you are
like, sir.”
Tactful young man, so anxious to make his host feel at home!
Dick, who had been dreading this moment, looked sheepish. It
seemed to him that the forehead of every one in the room slid
sideways like a secret panel revealing a wall upon which in large and
straggling characters were chalked up the words: don juan. And
Teresa was saying to herself: “Would it be vulgar ... should I dare to
say Lydia Bennett? And who will she say? Hedda Gabler?”
She had forgotten what the game really was and had come to
think it consisted of telling the victim the character that you yourself
thought they resembled.
“Who does Mr. Lane think he’s like?” repeated Rory.
“Drake, I should think,” said Guy, who never sulked for long.
Dick felt unutterably relieved.

“Is that right, sir?”
“That will do—Drake if you like,” said Dick, with a laugh.
“A Drake somewhat ... er ... cramped in his legitimate activities
through having ... er ... married an ... er ... spanish lady,” said Harry.
What the devil did he mean exactly by that? Surely the Doña
hadn’t been blabbing to him—Harry of all people! But she was
capable of anything.
“Oh yes, the Doña would see to it he didn’t singe the King of
Spain’s beard twice,” laughed Concha.
Oh yes, of course, that was it! He laughed aloud with relief.
And then followed a discussion, which kept them busy till
luncheon, as to whether it could be proved by Mendelism that the
frequent singeing of Philip II.’s beard was the cause of his successors
having only an imperial.
So here was another proof of the fundamental undramaticness of
life as lived under civilised conditions—for ever shying away from an
emotional crisis. As usual, the incident had been completely without
point; and on and on went the frivolous process of a piece of thistle-
down blown by a summer breeze hither, thither, nowhere,
everywhere.
3
Before the party broke up there was a little dance at Plasencia. It
was to be early and informal so as not to exclude “flappers”; for, as
is apt to be the way with physically selfish men, Arnold found grown-
up young ladies too exacting to enjoy their society and preferred
teasing “flappers.” Fair play to him, he never flirted with them; but
he certainly liked them.
So the drawing-room was cleared of furniture, a scratch meal of
sandwiches substituted for dinner, and by eight o’clock they were
fox-trotting to the music of a hired pianist and fiddler.

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